Wednesday, 30 June 2004

The device, which will sell for $136 in Japan starting late August, targets sleep-deprived businessmen, a company official said.

"There are many businessmen today who they say don't sleep because they are too busy. This gadget can be used to help them dream a good dream," said Takara spokeswoman Mayuko Hasumi.

In a study conducted on a group of men and women between the ages of 20-40, the device had a success rate of 22 percent in inducing dreams in which one of the prompt words appeared, said the Yomiuri Shimbun, a major daily.

Until Poe is finally liberated from the horrible contractual entanglements that are preventing her from releasing a new album and touring, the Poe Ball will be touring the world in her place. That's right. A bright red Poe Ball is going to make its way around the globe accompanied by a leather bound journal. I like to think of the Ball as a little space probe, going out to meet all the folks that have hung in there with Poe for so long; and of course we hope that the Ball will make lots of new friends along the way.

mefi post and saucerlike.com/ both have links to video of in-studio taping at kcrw that I can't watch at work.
(hey, fwiw: on the album I thought track #3 very good, but track #1 is my favorite because I loved William Gibson's last book too)

Before proceeding with out inquiry, we have to examine the several terms that designated witchcraft in olden times. It seems worth noting, that several of the more general names have simply the sense of doing or preparing, and therefore mark an imperceptible lapse of right doing into wrong. The OHG. karawan, AS. gearwian, had only the meaning of facere, parare, praeparare, ornare, but the same word in ON. göra approximates to that of conjuring, Dan. forgiöre; görnîng is maleficium, görnîngar artes magicae, much in the same was as facinus is both deed and misdeed. Our thun, to do, passes into anthun, to inflic (by sorcery); and the ON. fordœða (malefica), Sæm. 64a. 197b comes from dâð (facinus) (3) Now the Greek and Latin words epdein, rezein, facere (p. 41n.), mean not only to do, but to sacrifice, without requiring the addition of iera or sacra, and erdein tini ti is to bewitch; the ON. blôta, beside its usual sense of sacrificare, consecrare, has that of maledicere; whether fornœskja, sorcery, can be connected with fôrn, sacrifice, has been discussed, p. 41. ---A difficult word to explain is the OHG. zoupar divinatio, maleficium, zouparari hariolus, zouparôn hariolari; Notker spells zoufer in Ps. 57, 6, zouver in Boeth. 29, zouferlih, zouverlih in Cap. 45. 99; the MHG. zouber, zoubern answers exactly to the strict OHG. forms with p. to LG. tover, toveren, and the same in Nethl. both Mid. and Mod. (conf. toverîe, Maerl. 1, 260-3, toverare 1, 266. 2, 176-7, toeverîe is a faulty spelling); O. Fris. tawerie, Richth. 401. 21. The Icelandic has töfur instrumenta magica, töfrar incantamenta, töfra fascinare, töfrari magus, töfranorn saga, Fornald. sög. 3, 205; with which the Norw. tougre fascinare (Hallager 131b) and Swed. tofver incantatio, tofverhäxa saga, agree; we may safely suppose a modern importation of all these Scand. words from Germany, as they do not occur in ON. writings. (4) I am in doubt whether an AS teáfor is to be connected with zoupar; it signifies minium, color coccineus, and Lye gives (without ref.) tifran depingere, which ought perhaps to by týfrian. The addition of the adj. red in reád teáfor (rubrica) favours the conjecture that teáfor was a general term for the colours employed in illuminating manuscripts, and thus may stand for rune, mystic writing, hence our zauber (magic). (5) To identify zoupar with zëpar (p. 40), AS. teáfor with tiber, is forbidden by the difference of vowel, though it would bring the notion of magic very near that of sacrifice again. One would much rather trace zoupar to zouwan, Goth. táujan, AS. tawian (facere, parare), and assume the operation of some anomalous change of the w into v, b, p. (6) Even the Lith. daryti, Lett. darriht (facere), and the Slav. tvoríti (facere, creare, fingere) are worth considering. ---Another term no less perplexing is one peculiar to the Saxon branch of our race. In L. Saxony they still say for conjuring or soothsaying, wikhen, wicken (Ssp. 2, 13. Homeyer p. 117 var. x) and wigelen (wichelen), for fortune-teller wikker, wichler, for witch wikkerske, for sorcery wichelie. So in Nethl. both wikken and wichelen, wikkerij and wichelarij; M. Nethl. wikelare ariolus, Maerl. 2, 323. 348, wigelare, Kästner's Bruchst. 42b, wigelinge vaticinium 12b. The AS. also has the two forms: both wiccian fascinare, wicce saga, wiccungdôm (Cædm. 223, 17) or wiccancrœft ars magica; and wiglian ariolari, wigelere augur, wigelung augurium, incantatio; while the Fris. transposes the letters, wiliga incantatio, Richth. 401, 21. The Engl. has witch = wicce; from the AS. verb has survived its partic. wicked (perversus, maledictus), and O. Engl. had an adj. wikke meaning the same; add wizard, but all the L-forms have disappeared. The word is unknown to any HG. dialect, old or new; (7) yet I believe it springs from a root common to all Teutonic tongues, viz. veihan (no. 201), which again had originally the sense of facere, conficere, sacrare, and from which came the adj. veihs (sacer), OHG. wîh, and the noun vaíhts (res), conf. Slav. tvar, tvor (creatura, ktisij). We know that vaíhts, wight, acquired the sense of dæmon (p. 440-1), and the ON. vœttr (örm vættr, poor wight) means a witch in Sæm. 214b. I treat the kk in wikken as I did that in Ecke from the root agan (p. 237), and this is supported by the g in wigelen and ch in wichelen (evidently a ch = h). ---Near in meaning, though unrelated in origin, seems the OHG. wîzago, AS. wîtega, wîtga, Cædm. 218, 18. 224, 13, our weissage, prophet, soothsayer, but in a good, not in a bad sense; the ON. form vitki, Sæm. 63a. 118a, stands for vitugi (conf. vitug 94a), as ecki, eitki does for eitgi (Gramm. 3, 738), and vætki for vætgi. This vitki has been wrongly identified with AS. wicce: never does an AS. cc result from tg, though it becomes tch in English. (8) The corresponding verb is OHG. wîzagôn, AS. wîtegian, M. Nethl. witegen, Diut. 2, 202b. ---Equivalent at first to wîtega and vitki were the ON. spâmaðr, spâkona, spâdîs (pp. 94. 402): but from signifying the gift of wisdom and prediction as it resides in priest and poet, (9) they gradually declined into the sense of noxious wizard and witch. Even Snorri's for-spâr and fiöl-kunnigr (p. 1031n.) had already acquired the bad secondary sense. Fiölkunnigr (multiscius) came to mean magician, and fiöl-kunnâtta fiölkýngi, and even the simple kýngi (= kunnugi) sorcery. This kýngi was learnt as a profession: 'Rögnvaldr nam fiölkýngi,' Har. Hârf. saga cap. 36. Walther 116, 29 says of a lady wondrous fair: 'daz si iht anders künne (that she was up to other tricks, knew too much), daz soll man übergeben (you are not to imagine).' Hans Sachs calls an old sorceress by turns 'die alt unhuld' and 'die weise frau' iv. 3, 32-3 (see Suppl.).

Friday, 25 June 2004

what if you could chart sound by semantic impact rather than time signature?

rumbling ideas in my backbrain, can't sleep, dreams of thunder (saw the coolest art in the world, read some amazing poetry this morning & it done got my head all riled up) and to top it off I've got to drive to witchita in two hours

consider this my way of saying I be gone (offline) for a while,back sunday nightat the latest.

It seems that Capitol Records has some sort of new copy protection system,
that automatically, silently, installs "helpful" copy protection software on
MacOS and Windows as soon as you insert the CD into default systems.

The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, with its unpronounceable title, indecipherable text, and unidentifiable author, is one of the most puzzling, enigmatic and fascinating books ever conceived. Since its publication (1499), it has surprised its readers with its vast knowledge of architecture and landscape and garden design, but also engineering, painting and sculpture. Part fictional narrative, and part scholarly treatise, the book is, in addition, an extreme expression of erotic furore, aimed at everything, especially architecture, that the protagonist Poliphilo encounters in his quest for his beloved Polia, whose name translated from the Greek as meaning "many things." The book is also a political manifesto defending the right of women to express their own sexuality and the superiority of Eros, beauty and knowledge over aggression and war.

note to alex jones - horned owl isn't moloch, moloch's a minotaur-looking brass idol with hands extended over a firey belly upon which kids were sacrificed. the owl's an avatar of Athena, or Metis, who is a reflection of Sophia, who manifests as Baphomet

Wednesday, 23 June 2004

Audrey Farrar, Price's older daughter, says her mother didn't talk to anybody about the rock because her mother probably was skeptical.

"We have all watched it grow over the years," says Farrar. "It wasn't like it was growing while you looked at it. It was like, from time to time you would see it and say, 'Well, yeah, OK.' I just wish that we had taken measurements of it before now, because everybody just thinks we are crazy."

Bill Brooks, a longtime family friend, says he has witnessed the rock's growth.

"When I first saw it, it was sitting in the corner of the yard," said Brooks. "It was a little rock, and over the years it's gotten bigger and bigger. I'm scared of that rock."

Price said fear often was the reaction when she showed the rock and then told the story behind it.

"When people see it, they are afraid of it, because I tell them it's my growing rock," she said. "They said they wouldn't even keep it in the house. They think it would do some harm to me. But I'm not afraid of it."

When she shows the rock now, it weighs about 32 pounds and has to be held with two hands. It's brownish-red on the top and dark brown on the bottom and is shaped like an extra-thick loaf of pumpernickel bread. It also resembles the shape of a human brain.

musical notes are strung together in the same patterns as words in a piece of literature, according to an Argentinian physicist.

His analysis also reveals a key difference between tonal compositions, which are written in a particular key, and atonal ones, which are not. This sheds light on why many people find it so hard to make sense of atonal works.

Vox loves, believes in, and STANDS BEHIND all B-D products, which make hypodermic syringes that should ONLY be used for IM'ing insulin -- never, ever, anything else . . . at all. It chooses to disbelieve in the Secret, Hidden Network of Iranian Gas-Station Owners who are nearly always out of gas, change, or any food product that did not expire 3 years ago. They do, however, have a near-endless supply of baking soda and brillo, plus, also, not to be forgotten, Many Thousands of Mysterious Glass Tubes -- which the super-friendly worker will hand you through the bulletproof glass if he KNOWS you -- which could serve almost ANY purpose imaginable, but are definitely, without a doubt, and absolutely, NOT crackpipes.

possible existence of a well-organised racket,
exporting human organs to the US and European countries

The deputy chief of the police’s Criminal Investigations Department (CID), Mr Okoth Ochola confirmed to Sunday Monitor Saturday morning that police had gone into full swing to get to the truth of the matter.

“Yes we have got some information that there is a possibility that there is a racket dealing in human organs trafficking. We have started investigations. We have cast the net in the sea and are waiting for results,” said Ochola.

The suspects; Mr James Kityo, Mr Rogers Kitumba and Ms Harriet Namboga, claimed they were cannibals. But some of the bodies recovered were missing vital organs. Police now is probing the line that the cannibal theory was a cover up.

(I'm reading Villa Incognito at this very moment: "...every individual has to assume responsibility for his or her own actions, even the poor and the young. A social system that decrees otherwise is inviting intellectual atrophy and spiritual stagnation." - t robbins)

Spider-Man India interweaves the local customs, culture and mystery of modern India, with an eye to making Spider-Man’s mythology more relevant to this particular audience. Readers of this series will not see the familiar Peter Parker of Queens under the classic Spider-Man mask, but rather a new hero – a young, Indian boy named Pavitr Prabhakar. As Spider-Man, Pavitr leaps around rickshaws and scooters in Indian streets, while swinging from monuments such as the Gateway of India and the Taj Mahal....
The first four issues of the new comic series will be published and released by Gotham Entertainment Group in India, and are scheduled to coincide with the theatrical release of Spider-Man 2 in India.

Choctaw Medicine Man Panther (Preston Scott) told of how he was designated to follow the path of the heyoka (sacred trickster). One day as a boy he was being walked to school by his mother. A dark storming cloud came up from the west. His mother told him to run to his grandfather's house. He made it as far as his grandfather's yard when a lightning bolt struck so close to him that the heat and energy flipped him over. He landed on his feet still running and went up on his grandfather's porch. Being struck by lightning is Spirit designation as heyoka.

As an adult, Panther was climbing a hill one day and received a vision of three Grandfathers. He was told that he was going to go north to the Lakota land, where they would give him a foundation of spiritual knowledge to take back to his people, because the Choctaw had lost their spiritual ways.

The report notes how in Japan, one Jesuit missionary became a Zen Buddhist roshi, or master. He became a type of reverse missionary, implanting Zen Buddhist ideas and practice in Catholic groups in Germany and elsewhere, where they continue to thrive.

I'm an ISFP which means I both extrovertedly & introvertedly intuit. I don't pretend to understand everything I've linked to on a conscious, rational basis, and these links are more for my own research and blog aesthetic. I'd love to have the scientific wherewithal to be a contributor to an open-source dna project, but I don't. Instead, I'm writing a book about such a collective, and that's where these links have originated.

On the upper echelonz of power, above the CEOs and COOs – I’m talkin’ ‘bout the Board and the Financial investorz who are the backbone of these companies – there is an allegiance between these parties to “share” the wealth. As long as they can maintain control of the diverse choices conveyed to the masses as competition (KFC, Popeye’s Chicken, WalMart, Target, etc.), they win. This is about winnin’ regardless of who’s “on top.”

Case in point. Last presidential election, many felt Al Gore was stripped of his chance to be president. His competition being George W. Bush, Jr. (Skull&Bones class of 1968), in most eyes won because of his father George, Sr. Whether true or not is not the point, the point is regardless, if it were Bush or Gore BOTH were memberz of the same elite 2nd chapter of the Illuminati, Skull&Bones located at Yale University.

Flash forward 4 yearz later, anutha so-called election is upon us and the masses have been duped again to believe they have a say in who the next elect will be. As big a sham the last one was, the drama was not authentic. The Trilateral Commission have been choosing this country’s president at least since the dayz of Woodrow Wilson. Make no mistake about it, the Trilat’s have not shunned from countless reports that have proven their selection of the president yearz before the next election...

Kerry told his friends about a picture taken yearz before in the Senate president's chamberz with then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, the late Rhode Island Republican Sen. John H. Chafee and then-Sen. David L. Boren, an Oklahoma Democrat. According to a fellow Bonesman, Kerry had the photograph snapped because all four power brokerz were in Bones.

"John has been one of the major conveners" of his Skull & Bones group, sayz Dr. Alan Cross, a Bonesman with Kerry and now a
professor of social medicine and pediatrics in the school of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Cross says his friend enjoyz their shared past, planning reunionz with a mellow, rich atmosphere: "A bunch of us [Bonesmen] had dinner at his house in Boston four years ago at his birthday party. We had a great time – nice wine, good food, good companionship, pretty house."

Four yearz ago, classmates say, Kerry confided to his Bones brothers that should Bush become president, he would challenge him in 2004. A victory in the presidential election would be the fulfillment of a goal that Kerry had been telling his friends about since college.
Classmates say Kerry was tapped for Skull and Bones largely because of his prominence as head of Yale's political union and his near-perfect record as a member of Yale's debate team, whose discussion topics included not just politics but also lighter subjects – like why "a woman is just a woman but a good cigar is a great smoke."

Using a technique known as vagus nerve stimulation, the device uses electrodes implanted in the neck to activate brain regions that are believed to regulate mood....

The verdict by the advisory panel came after FDA scientists and some panel members argued the data presented by the manufacturer to show the device works were not convincing.

The agency is not required to follow the guidance of its advisory committee but usually does.

The device has been used in the United States since 1997 to control epileptic seizures. The manufacturer, Cyberonics Inc. of Houston, hopes to expand its market...

************update

even creepier: the reuters article doesn't mention that Cyberonics Inc. is out of Houston. It does, however, say this:

Analysts say the chronic depression market could be as much as 10 times larger than the one for epilepsy.

The article also goes on to describe what one FDA member called "annoying side effects:"

In one group of 342 patients studied, 68 percent suffered voice problems while another 29 percent reported coughing. Other reactions included breathing difficulties and heart problems, studies showed.
FDA staff also told the panel the number of suicides or attempted suicides were "enough to make us concerned." In the same 324 patients, 3.5 percent tried to kill themselves.

If the rich and powerful can drink in a public park in the weeks before next year's Super Bowl, why can't the homeless do it now? That is the question the lawyer for three homeless men is raising in a court challenge over their arrest for drinking in a park that will be part of a designated party zone before the Super Bowl.

Tuesday, 15 June 2004

The Alphabet Synthesis Machine is an aid to explorers of the liminal territory between familiarity and chaos. An interactive Java applet, the Machine invites you to evolve the letterforms of a personalized "alien alphabet": the possible writing system of your own imaginary civilization.

The Machine runs best on a Windows PC in IE5+. Macintosh users are strongly encouraged to download the latest MRJ from Apple. The machine can generate PC-formatted TrueType fonts of your alphabets

this is really freaking cool. i'm sure y'all can figure a decent use for this somewhere in yer various systems
my only complaint is that in designing the initial seed glyph you only get one shot. Each time you click the seed glyph window it starts from scratch.

March 4, 2004 -- PayPal Inc. an eBay owned company is being sued by Maximus Illuminati a.k.a. MyStockForum.Com for fraudulently suspension of PayPal account with close to $8000.00 in it. But Mr. Illuminati is only one of hundreds of thousands of people who have been and are being victimized by PayPal. PayPal has admitted that they freeze about 2000 accounts per day.

Monday, 14 June 2004

June 12, 2004 - As many of you have already heard, A Scanner Darkly is being adapted for film, and we are happy to finally share details about it. This project is very exciting for us -- not only because of the caliber of talent behind it, but because we believe that it will be the very first faithful adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story.

The grid, studied by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, uses electrocorticographic (ECoG) activity rather than electroencephalographic (EEG) activity, the latter of which is commonly used to study the brain.

This gives it a higher resolution and broader bandwidth, allowing for faster and more accurate mind reading....

While better than EEG in many ways, ECoG requires taking data invasively directly from the brain.

Leuthardt and colleagues therefore tested the system on four people with epilepsy who had ECoG implants so that doctors could find brain regions responsible for their seizures...

The researchers say that the system is faster to learn than those using EEG.

"It takes many months to train using EEG, whereas our approach was done basically in an hour or so," says Moran. "That's because we got the signals from the surface of the brain rather than having to go through the skull."

The Office of Naval Research has awarded BAE Systems a $35.4 million contract to manufacture 132 high frequency (HF) transmitters for installation in the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program's (HAARP) phased array antenna system. The contract was finalized April 19 with BAE Systems Information & Electronic Warfare Systems in Washington, D.C.

TransVision 2004 seeks to capture and highlight these trends by bringing together a wide array of transhumanist thinkers, artists, scientists and ethicists. In a celebration and investigation of the new culture, TV04 will provide captivating and avant-garde performance art and exhibitions, in concert with academic discussions, debates and presentations.

(incidentally, I submitted the final cut of DrBpoaIC as a musical composition a few moments ago, on sauceruney's advice)

It is mainly in the Chi'ism (and, because of its influence, in the Turkish epico-religious literature in Anatolia) that a quasi-magical importance is given to the number 17... From the ancient times, the Chi'ist mystics had venerated the number 17; this veneration has its origins in the ancient Pythagorean speculations lying on the letters in the Greek alphabet... 17 represented the number of those who would rise from the dead and each one of those people was to receive one of the 17 letters of the alphabet, making up the highest name of God, which is certainly related to the blade of the Star, arcanum 17 in the Tarot game whose symbolism evokes mutation, rebirth, and which Dr Allendy considers to be Karmic Liberation (alln, 364). Moreover, according to The Book of the Balance by Gâbir ibn Hayyân, an alchemist and a soufi, the shape (sura) of every thing in the world is 17; 17 is the very basis of the theory of the Balance and must be regarded as the canon of the equilibrium of every thing.

The number 17 has a particular importance in the tradition of the trade guilds which acknowledge 17 journey men initiated by Alî, 17 patrons of those who founded the muslim guilds initiated by Selmân-i Fârsî, and 17 main guilds (meln, 455 s.).

To the ancient Greeks, 17 represents the number of consonants in the alphabet, with 9 silent consonants and 8 semi-vowels or semi-consonants. These numbers were also tightly linked with musical theory and the harmony of the spheres.

We previously wrote that 17 was 9+8 and 72 was 9×8; furthermore when adding the digits of these numbers, we get 8 for 17, and 9 for 72. The 9:8 ratio is endlessly recurrent in the ancient Greeks' arithmological speculations, whether in grammar, music (the 9:8 ratio being represented by the middle strings of the lyre), metric theory or cosmology.

This number may have been regarded as ill-fated in Roman Ancient Times because its figures XVII are the same as VIXI, meaning "I lived".

If the new command is established, it would probably be headed by a four-star general and control U.S. forces based in Japan and Korea, except for those attached to the Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command here.
"Officials have not determined the command relationship between the new command and the Pacific Command in Hawaii, which now directs American forces in Korea and Japan," the source said. But he added that it was probable that the current four-star rank of the head of the Combined Forces Command would be downgraded.
Another military source here said the Pentagon was changing its previous plans and would establish a Battle Simulation Center specializing in Northeast Asian situations in Japan. Until now, most experts thought that center would be located in Korea.

Mailinator: "Its no signup, instant anti-spam service. Here is how it works: You are on the web, at a party, or talking to your favorite insurance salesman. Whereever you are, someone (or some webpage) asks for your email. You know if you give it, you'll be on their spam list. On the other hand, you do want at least one message from that person. The answer is to give them a mailinator address. You don't need to sign-up. You just make it up on the spot. "

Wednesday, 9 June 2004

Paul Martin and his fellow Liberal coup-backers seized the Haiti opportunity to show their imperial masters that they could be relied upon to mercilessly help carry out a systematic program of destabilization. Canada also showed that it can help navigate the waters of a post-coup environment, as the government lies over and over until the lie becomes the truth. Haiti is just a warm up, as Canada is frantically beefing up its armed forces ($8 billion spent since December 2003) in order to get up to speed with the United States and to face the greatest threat of the 21st century, which, according to Martin, "is centred on terror cells" (speech at Gagetown, NB, April 14, 2004).

speaking of - i really wonder about haiti... I kinda think the storms were HAARP in retaliation for the voodoo attack on the administration.

In retrospect, it was a bad idea to screw with my brain chemistry and possibly inflict lifelong damage just for the sake of experiment. I would not do something like this again. At the height of my withdrawal I was seriously terrified, thought it might never end, and repeatedly cursed my own stupidity. The fact that I considered a wholesale career change under the drug's effects, and couldn't complete any work, is alarming. Also, the zaps are for real. Fear them.

on an unrelated note, or maybe it's related, I don't know... is it possible to spread radical change through nonviolent terrorism? say jainist monks sitting perfectly still around a monument in silent protest, or hordes of hari krishnas depositing lilys at the steps of congress...

the yippie/fugs exorcism of the pentagon kinda thing, only today, with holograms, & smoke machines.

something so weird the neofascististic elements can't react to it, because it completely baffles them, & in so doing, triggers .. oh, I don't know.. a loathing for violence maybe?

can violent people be made nonviolent through nonviolent methods?

probably, otherwise why would there be laws regarding art?

**************update.. the artful dodge:

to clarify, I'm not advocating non-violence as a revolutionary tactic, I'm advocating non-violence as the revolution

She is painted like she has body rot or rigor mortis,she had blind eyes and black painted sculptured hair.She has a black and gray painted dress on and black painted boots.On her left arm she has sores and some of her fingers are twisted metal wires.She is mounted on a wooden base.

A friend loaned me a bunch of tapes, and one of them turned out to be an audio interview of Philip K. Dick, interviewed in his home. You can hear the television on and his kids playing in the background. Very relaxed and chatty.

not quite the dead sea scrolls but still

*********update

very very interesting stuff
kinda the missing link between Valis, The Divine Invasion, and Radio Free Albemuth there at the end.

& it's interesting to hear him react with paranoia at one point when the neighbor comes home.

this stuff is worth figuring out bittorrent if you're a dickhead wow that didn't come out right

June 30th- July 4th, A North American Convergence against Imperialism...

The W.A.R. Conference will be a gathering for anti-imperialists and anti-capitalists from across North America (and beyond!) to come together and create a four day convergence of discourse, critical analysis, education, skillsharing, and discussion on how to continue to build a movement for social justice and collective liberation.
The conference will be held at the University of Kansas, in co-ordination and conjunction with a day of action against U.S. Imperialism at Home and Abroad at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
The W.A.R. Conference is being planned by some of same folks that helped to plan for the 2002 North American Anarchist Gathering that was held in Lawrence, Kansas. We hope to make this event as successful as the previous one, and also strive to make it better.

First, SSRIs can compromise libido and sexual performance. This isn't always a disadvantage in over-excitable young males. It can still be a very distressing phenomenon for older people too embarrassed to talk about it. Technical performance difficulties can sometimes be counteracted by taking the blood vessel dilators apomorphine or phentolamine; the alpha2-adrenergic antagonist yohimbine; a phosphodiesterase type-5 inhibitor like sildenafil (better known as the sexual rocket-fuel Viagra), long-acting tadalafil (Cialis) or newly licensed vardenafil (Levitra); or a dopamine agonist, licit or otherwise, before bedtime action. Investigational drugs that heighten female sexual arousal (e.g. melanocortin agonists like PT-141) are another option. Yet this is scarcely an ideal solution. One of the major signs of depression is loss of interest in sex and reduced libido. So it's questionable whether the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry should continue to promote serotonergic "antidepressants" that are anti-sexual; and collude to suppress antidepressants that are pro-sexual.

Second, though some subjects may feel mildly euphoric, in other users the SSRIs serve more as mood-stabilisers and -flatteners in their lives. By increasing the user's emotional self-sufficiency, too, SSRIs may subtly change the "balance of power" in personal relationships - for good or ill. In some cases, SSRIs may even act as thymoanaesthetisers which diminish the intensity of felt emotion; by contrast, a mood-brightening serotonin reuptake-enhancer like tianeptine may intensify emotion instead. Affective flattening may be welcome to someone in the pit of unmitigated clinical depression. It is scarcely a life-enriching property for "normal" people who lack any convenient diagnostic category which acknowledges their malaise.

It looked a lot like the type of picture I saw in the office. But what does it mean?

It was a graphical representation of something called the Five Factor Model of Personality. Whoa!! I stood there dumbfounded, as if I had suddenly acquired the power to converse with whales like Aquaman or read Sanskrit like... well, someone that reads Sanskrit. It was an “Ah-Ha!” moment, but not in the style of the similarly-named 80’s Euro-band with Fabulous Hair, this was actual understanding.

Ahhhhhhhhh-HA!

Each of the computerized test questions maps to one of the “Five Factors”: Neuroticism (N), Extraversion (E), Openness to Experience (O), Agreeableness (A), and Conscientiousness (C). Those are the bold N, E, O, A, C letters in the upper left-hand corner, and below each of these letters is the overall quasi-numerical ranking for that Factor. The rest of the letters across the top are the facets for each factor, called respectively N1, N2, E1, E2, etc. Below each facet is a data-point as well. It’s possible a percentage of the test questions are “chaff” and are not scored, however, the principle still remains the same. Specifically, the each test question maps to a facet within a Factor, and the overall Factor rating is based – I assume – on the average of the Factor’s facets.

Teeth and Tongue Landscape
written by Carlton Mellick III, illustrated by Brian Doogan

In a world made out of meat, a socially-obsessive monophobic man finds himself to be the last human being on the face of the planet. Desperate for social interaction, he explores the landscape of flesh and blood, teeth and tongue, trying to befriend any strange creature or community that he comes across.

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SHALL WE GATHER AT THE GARDEN?
a novel by Kevin L. Donihe

"It illuminates. It demonizes. It pulls the strings of the puppets controlling the strangest of passion plays within a corporate structure. Everyone, every thing is a target of Mr. Donihe’s wit and off-kilter worldview . . . There are shades of Philip K. Dick’s wonderfully inventive The Divine Invasion (minus the lurid pop singer), trading up Zen Buddhism for unconscious Gnosticism. Malachi manifests where Elijah would stand revealed; and the Roald Dahl-like midgets hold the pink laser beam shining into our hero’s mind. Religion is lambasted under the scrutiny of Corporate money- crunchers, and nothing is what it seems." - From the introduction by Jeffrey A. Stadt.

# June 8-9 Dust Cloud begins to reach the Earth and darkening of the skies.
# June 18-20 1st impact
# June 24-25 2nd impact
# June 27-28 3rd impact of the "anomaly"

"...our sun's orbital velocity relative to galactic center is 19.4 km/s in the direction l(ii)=51 degrees, b(ii)=23 degrees from "local standard of rest"... I don't know what that is, I wish an astrophysicist or orbit specialist would come in here to help... the 23 degrees number bothers me, because 23 degrees is exactly the amount that the earth's North/South (rotational) axis is inclined to the plane of the Ecliptic; Aussie's rants swear loudly that the danger is coming from "DUE SOUTH" as observed in our sky from the ground. It seems somehow possible that our South Pole is currently pointing directly along the Sun's projected orbit in space?

Of course it's more than equally possible that a mad hoaxer seized on that 23 degrees number to spook me and others. ;)"

posted by zoogleplextypical chicken little republicans... their administration starts to fall apart & they run around screaming "The Sky Is Falling!"

****************update

hoax. more obvious when you realize the initial reports mention grovers mill

Thursday, 3 June 2004

"The innovative cooling system that Abba developed in 1995 consists of two earthenware pots of different diameters, one placed inside the other. The space between the two pots is filled with wet sand that is kept constantly moist, thereby keeping both pots damp. Fruit, vegetables and other items such as soft drinks are put in the smaller inner pot, which is covered with a damp cloth and left in a very dry, ventilated place. The phenomenon that occurs is based on a simple principle of physics: The water contained in the sand between the two pots evaporates towards the outer surface of the larger pot where the drier outside air is circulating. By virtue of the laws of thermodynamics, the evaporation process automatically causes a drop in temperature of several degrees, cooling the inner container, destroying harmful microorganisms and preserving the perishable foods inside.

Abba's first trials proved successful. Eggplants, for example, stayed fresh for 27 days instead of three, and tomatoes and peppers lasted for three weeks or more. African spinach, which usually spoils after a day, remained edible after 12 days in the Pot-in-Pot storage. "

Adult stem cells from fat can be turned into fully functioning brain cells Adult stem cells from fat can be turned into fully functioning brain cells

According to the researchers, the findings open up new possibilities for the treatment of nervous system disorders and injuries.

"We are trying to think about human disease in a new way," says collaborator Jeffrey Gimble of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. "Everyone is used to the concept of surgical, medical or pharmacological approaches to the treatment of disease—we're looking at one of the next steps in biotechnology, which is using cellular therapies."

"By creating viruses unable to follow their normal replication agenda, we can then harness the virus as an important research tool," says Yale researcher Anthony van den Pol. "Viruses with altered genetic codes also have substantial value for the potential treatment of a number of neurological diseases where a gene could be selectively targeted to one defective cell type."

Tuesday, 1 June 2004

TIME has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official—whose name was blacked out by the Pentagon—that raises questions about Cheney's arm's-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says "action" on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the "authority to execute RIO," or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year.

The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the contract "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's [Vice President's] office." Three days later, the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton the contract, without seeking other bids.

I have to tell ya, I'm shocked. Outraged. How dare TIME stoop to such obvious slander!

...Barbara Jones, from Abercynon, South Wales, said yesterday they finished their vigil at 5am. She said the team of ten all believed "beyond any degree of doubt" that they had detected paranormal activity at the base. The hangman's cell was paranormally "very active," particularly below the hatch through which those hanged dropped.... Although they did not see any ghosts, they had "very good" photographic evidence, yet to be analysed, which had them "jumping up and down".

"It has been very interesting, and there are many areas on the base which my team would like to come back and help with," she added.

The first thing I saw when Ballz Deep pulled up was a black Jaguar with "Lecompton Luvv" emblazoned across the darkly-tinted windshield. The door opened, and as I got in, I felt a moist rag clamp down on my mouth and nose. The last thing I remember was three gold teeth gleaming at me as I fell into a deep sleep.

When I came to my senses, I saw a "Welcome to Lecompton Sign" flash by the streaking car....
Since my first thought was of a split wig at the hands of Lecompton's most ruthless rap crew, imagine my surprise when M.C. Can O' Worms slipped a me a cold 40 oz. and a blunt the size of a lab rat. Over the next two hours -- deep in kind bud, free-flowing Cristal and bounteous lap dances -- I began to understand Ballz Deep.

"You wish you were in Ballz Deep," says Can O' Worms. "But you ain't."

And with those three words, I am once again only kneez deep. My heart fades as I am mercilessly shoved out onto the sidewalk, my fall cushioned only by a pocketful of used rubbers. With my research abruptly ended, I stumble back to Lawrence muttering obscenities, plotting my revenge... (with two sample tracks)